Wednesday, June 21, 2006

So, there is this microsoft gay pride month- hosted by GLEAM, or Gays & Lesbians At Microsoft.

So why do they have gay pride month here at microsoft, when they don't have a heterosexual pride month? What is more worthy of celebration- a a healthy gay couple, or a healthy marriage?

The idea of marriage has degraded exponentially in the past few hundred years in this country. I can't say for other countries- I don't live there, nor study the idea of marriage in them.

Take a look at marriage today. A relationship between a man and woman, and lets take the average nuclear family idea- which means you have a married couple, with two kids, one boy one girl. That is the average "nuclear family" according to US Standards.

Now, what is more worthy of recognition- a working, functional nuclear family, or a gay couple? To be honest, I am not degrading a gay couple. It probably takes a lot of work for one of those to function, too. But what relationship is truly holy matrimony designed by God?With the ideas that people don't really need to get married, they can just live together- you don't really need marriage. Marriage is optional for a couple- the value of a piece of paper does not increase the amount of love between two people, not when everything that is supposed to exist in marriage is had by couples that are not married. See, thats why sex outside of marriage is so controversial- its designed to be inside a marriage for very explicit reasons. God didn't say dont do it because its bad, and leave it at that- there are very valid reasons for it. If people started having lots of sex outside of marriage, then the need for marriage kind of goes away when people start living together. Hence, many people I work with have had 7+ year relationships outside of marriage, never want to get married, and have been living together for years. They just don't really need marriage when they have all of that.

Not to mention the fact that marriage scares most people! Why does marriage scare people? Imagine committing to one person for the rest of your life- you are done, out of the game of dating and mating. Its all over. You can't do whatever you want, you haveto honor someone else now. And why would you want to get married when theres a 50% divorce rate? who wants to get divorced? Bah, no one does.

So say they do get married. Well, problems arise, and because the value of marriage is so low, its not as big of a deal to get a divorce any more. Its just common for people to be on their second or third marriage, and its just so much easier to get a divorce and call it "irreconcilable differences" than to actually stick to committing to someone- for 6 or 7 decades! Which is quite the feat, really, and truly a task to be done.

The value of committing to someone in that way is very high. People are scared of that kind of commitment. People get in that commitment, think its too hard, and break the commitment with divorce. People don't even need that commitment, when you can get all of the benefits with little of the downsides by living with someone. You can just up and leave whenever you want, and you get sex, and you get to still go to the strip clubs. See, whats not to like. One of the only benefits really is just tax reasons.

See, its quite understandable that marriage has gone truly down hill in this country. Its easy to see why.

But just imagine the great American dream- wonderful family, loving husband, respectful wife, two kids, nice cars, nice house, nice lawn. Who doesnt want that. Who wants to actually work that hard to get that, and make it good? And how many people that have that are acting?

In conclusion,

I want a Marriage Pride Month at microsoft, that honors how hard it really is to have an amazing marriage, including the sacrifice it takes to get it.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

last thursday I woke up and got dizzy, smacked my head against the door, and have felt dizzy since. Went to the doc, he prescribed some medicine... that makes me incredibly tired! I feel like I haven't slept in 3 days. I'm sooo tired....

My boss had a private one on one meeting with me today, telling me he wants me to take on three projects in addition to my current project. And one of those projects is the biggest project in our entire division. Great opportunity for growth, but its also an opportunity for lots of weekend work. Its a hard situation- on one hand, it will directly influence my performance review, salary, and stock awards- on the other hand, my life doesn't really let me work the weekends too much. and my health is already down the tube. I remember last time I hit crunch mode for a project- I got really sick for a long time. With all this, on top of 3 ministries at the church (each of them being fairly time consuming) its a little much. A good friend of mine mentioned that to me, and told me I need to work on my health first... with wedding planning, as well, it sounds like I might need to put something on hold for a while. I'll be praying about it, for sure.

Monday, June 12, 2006

So it looks like we nailed down one huge planning bit: we're going to have the wedding at new heart. Yay. Just haveto finish filling out the paperwork for it... a lot cheaper than we had budgetted for, so now we can have a better wedding by allocating the cash towards other areas. :) yay.

Monday, June 05, 2006

Hmm.

So, not much is new here... Mandy & Mom have been gone for over a week now, and Daniel is a wreck. :) I don't envy him, and I absolutely do not look forward to Rosemary being gone for twice as long. God is my strength, God is my strength... woo boy. I'll make it :) I'll just haveto keep myself occupied as much as possible, I guess. Was thinking about starting to work out while shes gone, maybe pick up a new game... and definitely read more of my bible and write more sermons. I'm hoping her being gone doesn't affect my attendance to the friday night small group :(

Overall, things are: okay. We are starting to work on wedding planning ideas. Since our budget isn't overly large, we are looking at just doing a dessert only thing, instead of a full meal- maybe a chocolate fountain or something cool. We've kind of drafted up a family guest list... and we still need to work on the friends guest list, but things are progressing. We still need to do some of the more major stuff though, such as finding a location and booking it. We're still thinking january 27th for the date, as well- and more of an afternoon wedding, say 1pm or so. Gives you enough time to prepare in the morning, and enough time to... um... clean up, afterwards.

We sure have gotten enough advice for a lifetime, heh. :) Its hard to listen to it all, though- because if we took everyone's advice, we wouldn't get married until 2009, we could only see eachother 3 days a week, and Rosemary would be gone for a year anyways. Doesn't work for me. No way. :) I am wayyy too in love with that girl to put off the most important thing in my life. And waiting SUCKS! hehe. :)

If you are of the Christian faith, toss a prayer up for me. I could always use it. Ministry is hard, sometimes. :)